“Just a love story, people say about a book they happen to be reading, to be caught reading. They smirk or roll their eyes at the mention of love…. It’s possible to speak ironically about romance, but no adult with any sense talks about love’s richness and transcendence, that it actually happens, that it’s happening right now, in the last years of our long, hard, lean, bitter, and promiscuous century. Even here it’s happening, in this flat, midcontinental city with its half million people and its traffic and weather and asphalt parking lots and languishing flower borders and yellow-leafed trees—right here, the miracle of it.” This passage is from The Republic of Love, by Carol Shields, and I expect it probably sounds somewhat familiar to readers of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey:

“Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.—“It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;” or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

“Just a love story”; “only a novel!” The Republic of Love is one of my favourite Carol Shields novels, partly because of the Austen connection, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to visit the Project Bookmark Canada marker for the novel when my family and I spent a day in Winnipeg, Manitoba this past summer (during our road trip “From Halifax to Vancouver and Home Again”). My book club is reading The Republic of Love this month, so I decided this would be a good time to share these photos in a blog post.

The Bookmark is at the corner of River and Osborne, where the heroine, Fay McLeod, often waits in the bus shelter. One of the things Fay loves about Winnipeg is that “You were always running into someone you’d gone to school with or someone whose uncle worked with someone else’s father…. Fay again and again is reassured and comforted to be part of a knowable network.” (Read more about The Republic of Love Bookmark on the Project Bookmark Canada website.)

I love the idea of a “literary TransCanada highway,” as Kristen den Hartog has described these Bookmarks that stretch from Vancouver, BC to Woody Point, Newfoundland.

We now have one in Nova Scotia: the Bookmark honouring Alistair MacLeod’s novel No Great Mischief was unveiled just over a year ago, in Port Hastings, Cape Breton, and it features a passage from the end of the novel, including the famous last line: “All of us are better when we’re loved.”

I haven’t been to see the No Great Mischief Bookmark yet, even though I live in Nova Scotia—but I’ll get there! That day in Winnipeg, we also visited the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth.

Thinking about connections between The Republic of Love and Northanger Abbey prompted me to revisit Shields’s biography of Jane Austen this past weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a description of the 1996 Jane Austen Society of North America AGM on the first page. I read the book when it was published in 2001, and while I remember liking the way Shields defends Austen against the charge that she ignored history and politics in her work and the way she analyzes what it meant for Austen to have “a public self after a life that had been austerely private,” I had forgotten many details, including the descriptions of JASNA and, for example, the fact that she refers to Austen’s Mr. Knightley as a “cold potato.” I wonder if that assessment of him has anything to do with the fact that she gave the name “Peter Knightly” to the man her heroine Fay McLeod no longer loves.

If you read last week’s blog post, you’ll know I attended this year’s JASNA AGM in Washington, DC. I started going to JASNA AGMs in 1999, so I wasn’t in Richmond, Virginia to hear the paper Carol Shields and Anne Giardini gave at the 1996 conference. But I think Shields’s description would apply equally to this year’s AGM: she says there is “no attempt to trivialize Jane Austen’s pronouncements and mockingly bring her into our contemporary midst. The gatherings are both gentle in approach and rigorous in scholarship.”

Back in May, I read Startle and Illuminate: Carol Shields on Writing, edited by Anne Giardini and Nicholas Giardini, and I was thinking of that book as well as The Republic of Love while I walked the paths of the labyrinth in the summer. “I saw that I could become a writer if I paid attention, if I was careful, if I observed the rules, and then, just as carefully, broke them,” Shields says. I like that advice a lot, and I like what she says about ignoring trends: “Think instead of the stories you like to read, or better yet, the story you would like to read but can’t find.”

I’ve been working on a novel for several years now, writing a story that I’d like to read but couldn’t find, and for the next month or so I’m planning to take a break from social media and blogging so I can focus on revisions. The manuscript is at about 125,000 words right now—I need to write some more and then cut quite a bit. For inspiration, I’m going to turn to Jane Austen, who gave her niece Anna this advice about revising her novel: “I hope when you have written a great deal more you will be equal to scratching out some of the past” (9 September 1814).

I’ll also be thinking of Shields’s words about how “creativity flourishes in tranquil settings,” and of advice from another Canadian novelist I admire, Christy Ann Conlin, who wrote a guest post here a few weeks ago about “The Sweet Exhilaration of Solitude” and the value of “slipp[ing] away from screens and social media.” I hear November is a good month for writing novels. See you again in December.

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I enjoyed hearing about the connection between Carol Shields and Jane Austen. And, of course, seeing the pictures of the Bookmark and the Labyrinth.
Northanger Abbey was the first Jane Austen book I read (way back in 1992), and it remains one of my favourites because of that. You don’t hear about it as much as a few of the others.
Enjoy your time writing!

Thanks, Naomi. I expect Northanger Abbey will get more attention over the next couple of years, because the 200th anniversary is coming up. The 2019 JASNA AGM in Williamsburg, Virginia is celebrating NA, with a focus on “Real, Solemn History.” Should be fun!

Thank you thank you thank you for this wonderful post!!! I often need reminding to ‘write what you want to read and can’t find”. The reminder has officially ‘unstuck’ me on the book I’ve been attempting…….soon to be a short story! Also, presently reading “Unless”. The writing is deep and beautiful, and inspires me. I look forward to ‘the republic if love’. LOVE the bookmark trail. Perhaps I can convince Lynn to join me on it! Finally, best wishes for much creativity and toughness to edit yourself. Unplugged is the only way! F.Scott Fitzgerald said ” if you love it, take it out”! Daunting and difficult, I know! Thinking if you, Leslie

That would be a wonderful road trip for you and Lynn! And I am thrilled to hear that Carol Shields has inspired you to keep writing, Leslie. So glad this post was helpful. I hope you’ve had a good month of writing. Thank you for your good wishes about my novel. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I made some good progress with both writing and cutting things out in November, so I’m pleased with that.

My husband and I were able to go on the Baltimore tour and hear Juliette Wells again at Goucher Library. We were able to see and touch many books and items pertaining to Jane Austen, including the 1816 American publication of “Emma”. We met the Conservator of books, a lovely young woman from Albuquerque. Her mother is in our JASNANM group!
Your presentation “”Faultless Emma” was much enjoyed by us. Thank you for the handout.
May your creativity flourish in a quiet setting. I look forward to your return.

Pat, it was so lovely to meet you in Washington. I’m delighted to hear that you enjoyed my talk, and that you had the opportunity to hear Juliette speak again. Thanks very much for your good wishes. Hope to see you at a future AGM!

Sarah, Your post intrigued me about Shields’s Knightly, and so I Googled, and found this very brief discussion in an article about Shields and Austen by Nora Foster Stovel in the print Persuasions for 2008:

“Shields asserts, and she dramatizes her beliefs in novels such as The Republic of Love. Faye Hammill claims that “the plot of Shields’s novel, The Republic of Love (1992), is basically the same as Austen’s recurrent courtship plot. The orientation of the book towards the popular romance is also broadly comparable to Austen’s response to the sentimental fiction of her day”.”

This was so interesting on a number of levels…first, those bookmarks! What an incredible idea. I think, like lighthouses along the Pacific coast, (my goal) those would make a great list of ‘must visit each one’….and congrats on your nearly finished novel. Besides a talent for story and words, writing is just hard work, and a devotion to the craft that takes up a lot of that precious commodity, Time. I wish you the best, and hope your November is all you plan for it to be! I have a feeling the finished result is something I will very much want to read.

Ah, lighthouses along the Pacific coast…. Now you’ve inspired me to think of a similar tour on the East Coast. Where would you start? I think I’d begin with Peggy’s Cove, because it’s the obvious choice in Nova Scotia and it’s nearby. But I can also think of several in PEI that I’d like to visit (or revisit) and photograph. Oh, and Cape Forchu, near Yarmouth. Now I’m thinking maybe that would be a good topic for a blog post sometime. Have you photographed the lighthouses near where you live? Thanks for your good wishes about my novel!

It took me a few months to get to it, but I really enjoyed putting this post together. I guess the colder weather in November makes me want to revisit photos from the summer — I remember doing the same kind of thing last year, when I posted in November about a trip to McNabs Island in July. Glad you enjoyed the photos!

Welcome!

I write about Jane Austen, Jane Austen for kids, and Edith Wharton. Sometimes I post about other writers I admire, such as L.M. Montgomery, and about places I love (especially Nova Scotia and Alberta). I taught writing at Harvard University before I decided to come home to Nova Scotia to write full time.

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"I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." Jane Austen to James Stanier Clarke, 1 April 1816

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